


Full Circle

by hellkitty



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: M/M, Sticky Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-01
Updated: 2013-03-13
Packaged: 2017-12-04 00:18:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/704304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oh wait, what? Another opportunity to bring Wing back to life for fluffy happy reunion sex, kinkmeme?  SAY NO MORE. </p>
<p>This time, though I'm not going to be stupid and try to guess how many chapters. Let's just roll with it! :D</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. From Steel's Cold Hand

It made a brutal sense, Drift thought, as he drove the cold steel of the blade through his own chassis. It made the kind of sense that made you believe in a divinity, if not a merciful one.  
  
Then again, maybe Drift didn’t deserve mercy.   
  
Why else could he, alone of all the Autobots here, hear it?  Why was he the only one tormented by the Dead Universe’s awful call?  He could feel it, reaching into him, through him, as though he were insubstantial, bending him to its will.   
  
Here he was, again, though, in the bowels of a hateful Cybertron, the darkness and the stench of it mocking him, a sinister laughing voice from his past, chortling that after all, for all he’d done, for all he’d tried to do, he’d never escaped the gutters.   
  
How could he, when he’d carried the gutters within him all this time?  
  
The blade grated past his upper armor, and he had to brace himself to push it deeper, through the inner systems, feeling the screech as it scraped over the side of his spark chamber.  
  
Another echo, from another time, the pain of his initiation, the zirconium spark chamber laid bare before Megatron, the metal sheared away, drowned by the sound of his scream.   
  
Drift had felt pain before: physical injuries, gunshots, torn and rent limbs.  He’d felt the pain of a world’s contempt so sharp and harsh that it had driven him to try to hide in Syk dreams.  But nothing had ever hurt like this, the spark-deep agony of knowing that he’d ranged the stars, gone places he’d never dared even dream of back in the gutters before the war…only to die here, on his knees, just as he’d been so many times.  
  
As if it all had been worth nothing.  
  
He fell, and his cry was the sharp poignant sound of loss, of an unwilling surrender, falling by his own   
hands. He had to stop himself. No one else could.  It was the least token of redemption he could offer.   
  
He couldn’t even hear Ironhide, or Rodimus, their voices tinny and thin and drowned out from the roar of the other’s control in his systems, a blinding binary burst, overwhelming him like static, threatening to dissolve him.  
  
He let go. He dissolved.  He unraveled, falling into the whiteness, into the maelstrom, through it into what he dared to hope, with his last hope, silence and peace.   
  
“Drift.”   
  
The voice seemed familiar to him, a sound that seemed to vibrate against his spark, like a plucked wire.  It sang against him, sang through him, giving him a name he knew was his, even as it seemed distant, something discarded and empty.   
  
“Drift.”  The sound, closer, and almost chastising, and the white light took on a golden cast, like the bright light of a nurturing sun, warm and accepting, instead of sterile and cold as the whiteness.   
  
He trembled, without body, his whole being shimmering apart and coalescing back together, little pulses of dissolution, fear and hope rending and binding him. Because he knew that voice, faintly, from across the distance of ages, ages he’d marked as he always had--in fighting and killing, as if he’d learned nothing at all from the last time he’d seen...  
  
...Wing.   
  
He didn’t speak--he had no way of making sounds, being just a bit of froth fading into the light, but the word existed between them, another vibration, another thread in a tapestry that bound them.   
  
It fit. It suited. It was the only thing that made sense in this world--that at this last moment, he’d see Wing. And perhaps Wing would blame him--rightly so--for his death. And perhaps Wing would welcome him, with one of those sunlit smiles that forgave everything.  Either way, if anyone had the right to judge him, it was Wing.   
  
And WIng was here, appearing from the whiteness, luminous and soft-edged. He moved, gliding, it seemed, on insubstantial feet, to lay a hand on the wound in Drift’s chassis. The sword had disappeared, somehow, and Drift had a moment of anxiety, not knowing when that had happened, or how. But it was gone and Wing’s touch on his chassis felt tingly and warm, drawing all the pain of it--physical, mental, spiritual--into that glowing grey palm.    
  
“Wing,” he breathed, as though his whole being was exhaling the syllable.  He struggled for something else to say, words that would suit, words that would explain or express or apologize.  But they escaped him, slipping into the nacreous  ether.  Wing’s name was the only sound that mattered. Wing’s face became his whole world as the jet leaned in, nearly drowning Drift in the golden glow of his optics, as the mouth brushed against his, a velvet/electric thrill that sang through him.   
  
“Live, Drift,” Wing said.  And Drift felt himself receding, somehow, the light misting between them.  He stirred, frantically, a creature suspended in zero gee, straining back to Wing even as he felt himself shift away, stretched, woeful and unwilling, back to life.  His last image was of Wing, far away, a golden prize he had almost had.   
  
[***]  
  
He lived, though he didn’t want to, taking Wing’s words as a sentence as much as a command. He felt himself drawn back to life, and all its burdens, almost against his will, the white soft light of Wing sharpening to the harsh bright phosphorus of a medibay, and Ratchet’s sharp-reliefed frown bent over him.   
  
“Hnnph,” Ratchet said. “About time you woke up.”   
  
“Alive,” Drift mumbled, the word a paltry echo of Wing’s rich timbre. “I’m alive.”  
  
“Damn straight you are,” Ratchet said. “Not for lack of trying, though, apparently.” He scowled, bending closer to buff some spare flux off a weld. “Seriously. Drift. You’re supposed to kill the slaggin’ enemy. Not yourself.”   
  
It took Drift a beat to realize it was a joke--or as close as Ratchet came to making one. The apology died on his lip plates. “Is the war over, then?”  
  
An unreadable expression. “I suppose you could say that.”   
  
Drift felt his supraorbital ridges knot. “What does that mean?”    
  
Ratchet busied himself finding a loose wire and wrapping it with tape. “No one’s fighting anymore.” His voice was almost deliberately light, too light.   
  
“Ratchet.” Because that wasn’t a good answer, either. It was a fact, but the kind of fact that seemed to hide a lot of non-facts.    
  
Ratchet sighed, laying down the spool of tape. “No one knows.  The war’s over, but nobody won. Nobody knows what to do next.”  He looked irritated, more at having to say it than at Drift in particular.   
  
That was unsettling, more than Drift thought it could be.  If they’d lost, he’d have been able to blame himself for the delay, for what he’d done before he could stop himself. If they’d won, he could have felt good about his part in it. Now....   
  
Now, Wing’s word, Wing’s command, clicked into focus. He still had work to do. He was still needed.  Why else would he be sent back, after a glimpse of reward?    
  
The shadows seemed to fall away, the lights brighter.  He felt a lightness, a brightness in his chassis, over his spark, where Wing had laid his hand.  “We’ll figure it out,” he said, confidently, struggling to his elbows.   
  
“ _We_ ’ll figure something out,” Ratchet said, stressing the pronoun to exclude Drift, as he pushed Drift down, hand flat on his chassis--large medic’s hands, forged and skilled, where Wing’s had been. “You’re going to lie still and heal. For a change.”   
  
“A change.”  Drift let himself be pushed back, his spark throbbing so powerfully against his chassis it seemed to make his visual field pulse.   
  
“This time,” Ratchet said, “you’re going to listen, and not go haring off into trouble again.” His optics narrowed under his medic’s chevron. “Oh, you don’t think I don’t remember? Rodion?”   
  
Drift blinked, and then subsided. “That was a long time ago,” he said, quietly.  And he was so different, back then, full of anger and arrogance.   
  
“Yeah, well, when I save someone’s fraggin’ life, I expect it to stay saved.”   
  
Saved. The word seemed to ring in Drift’s audio, like a sound of a bell, shimmering in the air. And he knew, he could feel it now, that Wing was right. Everything was falling into place, fixing itself, as though unraveling all the wrongs and hurts he’d knit into the world in his life.  He felt something like tears sting his blue optics--optics he’d gotten in Crystal City, his first change, as he lay down on the berth, obedient.   
  
“Thank you,” he murmured.  To Ratchet. To Wing.  To life.


	2. Light the Fire in Me

He was leaving Medibay, finally, leaving the windowless space inside Kimia’s shattered bulk that had been set aside for those who just needed time and a nucleon drip.    
  
It was more time than he wanted to spend ,and he felt himself nearly itching with eagerness to leave. If he was here, sent back by Wing, it was for a purpose, and that purpose wasn’t lying around. He knew he should be calm, peaceful, but he was restless, and sooner or later, lying around did him no good.   
  
Drift held out his arm at the dispensary window, with the temporary medistamp on it, letting the medic on duty scan the code. The red fins on the medic’s head dipped as he looked at the scanner, his name platen listing him as 'Fixit'. “All right. You’ve been cleared.”  He offered a smile. “Going to feel good to get out of here, huh?”   
  
Drift smiled back, the expression easier than he thought it would be, as though that inner brightness were animating him. “No offense.”  
  
Fixit gave an easy shrug. “None taken. The war’s been over for days and you haven’t even seen Cybertron.”  
  
And Drift wanted to. Badly.  But first. “My, uh, my weapons?”  Ratchet had a strict ‘no weapons in medibay’ policy, and the war might be over, but no one wanted to challenge the senior medic on that one.   
  
“Ah. Right. Hold on.”  Fixit disappeared into a back room, mumbling Drift’s name.   
  
“Hey there,” Rodimus, suddenly beside him, leaning to rest his forearms on the dispensary counter. “Good to see you up and around. You really did a number on yourself.” He reached over, flicking one finger against Drift’s chest plate. “Seriously. We all thought you were a goner.”   
  
“I did, too. I thought we all were.”    
  
“Yeah, well, hey, none of that stuff, again, all right?”  Rodimus flashed that grin, the infectious one that made it impossible to take offense.   
  
“I hope not.” What else could he say? That was clumsy and strange, but, well, so was stabbing yourself through the chassis, he guessed. “What happened down there?”    
  
A glitter of the blue optics, almost out of place in the orange and red and chromium of Rodimus’s armor. “Drift, if I’m going to tell you that story, there needs to be engex involved. For both of us.”   
  
“That bad?”   
  
“Trust me.”  Rodimus turned back, as Fixit returned, fumbling with Drift’s weapons. Rodimus chuckled. “More swords than hands: that’s so you, Drift.”   
  
Drift was just too glad to see them again to do anything other than duck his head with a shy smile. He’d felt naked without them. Naked, but not empty, for once.  He slid the blades home in their sheaths, with a sense of fitting and complete rightness, before reaching to cradle the Great Sword.    
  
Wing’s Great Sword, that he’d taken up, the blade still warm from Wing’s hand. The moment was scarred into his memory, crystalline-bright: the way Braid struck Wing down, just as the jet’s right hand wrapped around the hilt of this same sword.  And then Drift had seized it later, barely able to stand, sparking and shot with agony.  The Great Sword had blazed in his hand, giving him strength. Real strength, real, power, real conviction: not the false ones he’d followed for so long.   
  
He’d thought at the time that it had come too late.   
  
Now, he didn’t think so.   
  
The blade felt familiar in his hands, a comforting weight. He ran one thumb up the blade, up the intricate calligraphy of Primal Vernacular, like some magical spell.  It was like tracing the contours of his life, again, the familiar ritual of so many nights he’d held the sword across his knees, feeling the subtle, strange sensation under his palm--not quite a vibration, not quite a heat, but just a sense, a presence of something that wasn’t mere metal.  
  
He stopped. Rodimus said something to him that he didn’t catch, just a burble of sound, his entire attention arrested by the gem in the sword’s hilt.   
  
It was gold, the warm, honey amber of Wing’s optics.   
  
It hadn’t been the last time he saw it.   
  
It was a sign. It had to be.  What else could the sudden shift mean? He could feel a reflex of the warm light from that white place, as though it were still around him.   
  
Maybe it was. Maybe he was awake, but still there, always there, in some mystical union.  His fingertips brushed the rounded surface of the orb, straining to feel Wing’s presence. He could--almost--feel the floor begin to shift, as if it were dissolving, and he was once again in that bright place of spirit, the sword’s bladed edges beginning to glow.   
  
“Hey. You all right?” Rodimus tapped him on the shoulder.  Drift shook himself back to awareness.   
  
The brightness faded, the floor resolidified under Drift’s feet. And the sword, though still bright gold, was sharp and dark. He shook his head, disappointed, but not sure in what. “Yeah.” His voice felt scratchy. “Yeah, I’m fine.”   
  
Rodimus tilted his head. “Yeah? You don’t sound so fine. Sounds to me,” and the grin swept the momentary flicker of concern off his face, “like you could use that drink.”   
  
[***]  
  
That drink had led to a second, and a third, the engex hitting his systems--fed only on dilute nucleon for days--hard.  And Drift had ended up telling Rodimus more than he would have, the engex and Rodimus’s easy company letting the words pour from him. He’d never found it easy to talk before, weighing every word against the fact that the Autobots only tolerated him at the best of times: Bumblebee’s words, despite all that time, still stung, and Drift had learned to keep his peace.   
  
But Rodimus accepted him, even before those dark tunnels under Cybertron. And Rodimus had told him of his own history, hardly stellar, his complicity in the destruction of Nyon, and how the choice in the war hadn’t come easily to him, either.   
  
By the time they were done talking, both out of words, dawn was cresting over the horizon, stretching thin fingers through the cloud cover that was still more than half-smoke of a planet recently burning. Rodimus had given him a friendly pat on the shoulder, not intimate like Wing’s touch, or cool and professional like Ratchet’s, but one that offered friendship. “Later,” Rodimus said, stifling a yawn with his other hand, “I want to hear more about those Knights of yours.”    
  
Drift had nodded agreement, the words and the touch promising one positive glowing link in his future: a friend, a real one. And Rodimus had staggered off to his quarters, leaving Drift to wander the almost too silent hallways.  At this hour, during the war, any camp would have been alive with rustling, preparing to stand-to, changing shifts, readying for a long day, on watch against assault. It seemed eerie to see light slicing in through windows and the crash-split skin of the research base, and hear only the soft sounds of recharge.   
Drift found himself out on a ledge, an old access path that spiraled around Kimia’s hull. He followed it, feet thunking on the magna panels, until he could see the dawn, following the gouache of dawn toward the bright crescent of the sun itself.   
  
He stopped, letting the rays strike his face, little caresses of warmth playing over his frame, as though only daylight made him real, solidified the repairs and past and present into...Drift.   
  
Drift took the Great Sword from off his back, driven by some strange impulse, and held it out to the sun, gold into gold. The hilt’s gem split the light into scattered rainbows, bright prisms like promises.  It was still amber, still the color of Wing’s optics, something at the gem’s heart seeming to kindle in the daylight, stirring to life.   
  
Below him, the loose settlement of what Rodimus had called the NAILs spread like a little city, organic and ramshackle, life building on death, newness on old.  It was ugly and small and squalid, but even from here, the sun’s rays seemed to catch in an aura of hope.   
  
“I wish you could have lived to see this, Wing,” Drift said.  “It’s not much, but it’s a start. It’s home.”  And every Cybertronian’s spark longed for home, even when, like Deadlock, he hadn’t known what ‘home’ meant.   
  
He gave a sad snort of laughter. “You’d know what to do, how to make things better. How to fix all this.” Because Rodimus hadn’t lied, talking of the tension, the resentments, the old grudges and how hard it was to know what to do after millenia of responding to anything by reaching for a weapon.   
  
Drift was holding a weapon, now, but it was different. He felt different, as though the shower of light from the blade was changing him, calling forth something bright and wonderful from deep within himself, as though under all the violence and anger and the dirt of the gutters, there’d been this glowing ember, all this time.


	3. Shine

“And Fort Max.” Rodimus frowned, toying with his new hands, still the electrum underframing, balling and flattening his fingers and observing the effect.   
  
“There’s an infirmary cradle in the brig,” Drift said, trying not to let the weariness show. It had been a long day, and he could feel himself beginning to fray.  Funny, he thought, how he’d fought for cycle after cycle in combat, on both sides, seemingly inexhaustible, but a long day of having to be the Third just wore him out.    
  
Possibly, he thought, because in combat, the worst that could happen was you could die: here, he could get others killed. Or, as he’d discovered with the sparkeater, worse.    
“Whirl?”   
  
“There’s no real reason to hold him,” Drift said. “He neutralized Max, who’d been about to kill Rung. It’s not quite self-defense but.....” he shrugged. But Whirl, really.   
  
“I’m surprised he stopped before killing him.”   
  
Drift frowned. “He’s an Autobot, after all.”  
  
“Not a good one.” Rodimus scowled down at some imagined speck of dirt on his finger, before looking up, with a grin. “But are any of us, really?”  
  
It was supposed to be a joke, but it poured sour over Drift’s audio. Was he a good Autobot? Was he ‘good’?  He tried. Really he did. But who was to say if he was better than Whirl?  He managed a nod, but nothing more.    
  
“Hey. You okay?” Rodimus asked.   
  
“Fine,” Drift said.  Not fine.  Things didn’t seem fine right now. They seemed...cursed.  The explosion. The sparkeater.  They were supposed to be on a quest, to save the future of Cybertron.  It shouldn’t feel cursed: it should feel right, golden and sure like a path of amber.  “Thing is, Whirl’s not likely to go anywhere. Even we didn’t have cameras on, he’s confessed.” Not like you could really call it a ‘confession’. More like ‘gloating’, only with an almost hurt note of not being able to do it sooner.    
  
Drift could understand that sort of regret. It made Whirl almost...tolerable for a klik.    
  
A puzzled look from Rodimus.  “Yeah, well, okay. Keep me updated if anything new comes up.”  He pulled a face. “I’ve got a meeting with Ultra Magnus in five.”   
  
“Sorry.” The word was automatic, slipping out before Drift could pull it back.   
  
Rodimus laughed. “I know!  I’m more afraid of the Wrath of the Frowned One than the sparkeater and all the eldritch horrors of undeath.”   
  
Drift reached for the persona, one last time, flashing a cheeky grin back. “I have faith in you.”   
  
“That makes two of us,” Rodimus said, with a toss of his helm. “Now get on out of here before he catches you in his wake of dourness.”    
  
“Taking one for the team?”  It came easier, this time.   
  
Rodimus feigned a long-suffering sigh. “Perils of command.”  
  
[***]  
  
He was glad to be released, hoping it didn’t show, or didn’t show as anything other than a joke that matched Rodimus’s.  He’d never been a gregarious mech, even in the gutters, even when Gasket was alive.  He was trying, Primus save him, though. Trying to be more open, trying to be more, well, there, to step out of the shadows and say something, to contribute something more than another body to break.  
  
It all felt unnatural. He’d hoped it would grow easier in time, but thus far, it was still a struggle, still felt too much like trying too hard to be someone else, without even being sure who that was. It felt like firing a weapon without having a target.    
  
Here, though, door clicking locked behind him, he could drop all that, drop the discomfort and pretense, and just be.    
  
Here, he knew who he was.  Or who he wanted to be.    
  
He drew the Great Sword from its brace on his back, the little winglets releasing their tensioning grip, letting the blade slide, smooth as satin, free.  He held the blade with a long reverence, already missing the familiar weight of it against his back, his free hand hitting the light, letting darkness fall in the room, like letting a mask drop.   
  
Drift settled on his berth, cross-ankled, laying the blade across his knees, stroking it with a lover’s solicitous fingers.  He could feel the day’s tension fall from him like shredded gauze, the tight forced smile melting into a gentle warmth as his optics caught the glitter of the hilt’s gold gem.    
  
“Hey,” he breathed, the quiet voice of not wanting to disturb a slumbering lover.    
  
He’d die before he tried to explain it to someone, least of all Rodimus, but he would swear he felt Wing’s presence here, especially in these moments, holding the blade, letting his gaze absorb into the gem, as though projecting himself into that golden landscape, radiant and perfect. It seemed to glow, even in the darkness.   
  
The warm smile’s edges withered like leaves in the last days of summer.  “Missed you.  Then again,” the smile quirked, “I always do. But especially in times like this. I always think.” He looked up, sighing, though not really seeing the dark shapes of the sparse furniture. “I always think you’d know better.  You were always so sure, so certain. Even that last day, knowing you were volunteering to die. No hesitation. No doubt.  I just...I doubt everything lately. Myself most of all.”   
  
He gave the unfunny sort of laugh, the sound muffled in the room’s darkness. “I remember not doubting. I think it was because I didn’t stop to think. At all. No time to doubt if you never stop.  And I was wrong. In everything, Wing.  And.”   
  
Drift’s voice dropped, as though, even here, even now, he didn’t want to be overheard.  But Wing didn’t need him to be loud. “And I don’t know if I’m making the right choices.  I’ve got secrets. I’m trusted. But, I don’t know.”   
  
He shifted, on the berth. “I know. You’d tell me to follow my spark, wouldn’t you?” A laugh. “It’s harder to do than that. At least for me.  Because my spark...my spark just wants you.”    
  
Drift squeezed his optics shut, cutting out even the darkness of his quarters.  He slid down to one side, still holding the blade, curling around it like a lover, resting his helm’s crest on the sword’s grip.  “It’s going to hurt, Theophany.  I know it is. Because I’ll be seeing everything again: Dai Atlas, Axe, the others. The Circle’s chambers. Everything.”  
  
“Everything but you.” The words came out as barely a whisper, as though the truth and longing were too much to be uttered.    
  
He could feel the last of the tension sheet off him, a warm, delicious fuzz of sleep beginning to steal over him.  His limbs felt heavy, but velvety and delicious, his earlier exhaustion melting into a lover’s touch, drawing his optic shutters down, cycling him down into a rich, plush drowsiness, loose and comforted.   
  
Drift’s arms tightened around the blade, pulling it into an embrace, so that the gold gem filled his entire field of vision and he could see in the darkness a little dancing flame in the gem’s center.  “Wing,” he breathed, a gold-lit prayer, the words stitched from his spark, “I’d give anything to see you again.”   
  
And he let recharge sweep over him, falling through its darkness with a sort of gratitude.  The gem glowed in his vision, a burning star, with Wing at its center, reaching toward Drift, hands like clouds reaching across time.


	4. Illuminate me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Theophany: a visible manifestation of a deity

He’d thought he’d braced himself. He’d thought he was prepared for Theophany.   
  
He wasn’t. It was worse than anything he could have imagined, and as he stood, bits of charred insulation crackling into dust beneath his footplates, he wished it was merely as bad as being haunted with old reminders of what he might have had.   
  
The city was in ruins, and every broken angle, every charred edge, seemed like a finger of blame pointing at him, castigating him for leaving. For knowing.  Lockdown had tracked him here which meant that the Decepticons had known, for a long time, where this city was. And after their encounter, Lockdown wouldn’t have felt much compunction in turning the city’s coordinates over to Megatron, as some sop for his failure.   
  
This.  This was all his fault. All of it, even the empty hiss of dust blown over the abandoned pavements, the ringing hollowness of the place.    
  
No one understood--how could they?  They didn’t see the city at its height, glowing with a promise and happiness he’d only been able to envy back then.  They didn’t know Wing, his hard gentleness, the glint of mischief in his gold optics, the sleek, fluid way he moved when fighting. This was just, to them, another old battlefield among thousands.   
  
And there had been a time when he’d been just like that, when every battlefield, every corpse, was just a set of coordinates, a win or a loss.   
  
This was both, and it was special and it hurt.   
  
“You need a minute?” Rodimus’s hand on his shoulder, awkward but trying.  It was the effort that got through--how bad Drift must have looked to break through Rodimus’s cavalier attitude.    
  
He shrugged the shoulder off,  trying to pull them both back onto less uncomfortable territory.  “Yeah. Maybe. Just a minute.”   
  
He didn’t want to be here, but he didn’t want to leave. Every moment here was an agony, a remembering of what it was, and what he’d hoped it would still be.  But at the same time, he didn’t want to move forward, because that would make this real, somehow, lock it into memory, admit that the beautiful dream was over. He felt almost dizzy, torn between those, as he moved, aimlessly, down a road.   
  
It felt symbolic: unmoored again, moving without will or direction.  But he had to move, to take it all in, to keep himself here and now.   
  
Drift could feel something building, with each step, something inside begin to well upward, growing in force and strength.   
  
He moved faster, steps hastening one after the other, until he was nearly running, as though the motion was bringing that thing up out of him, a hard, swirling dark mass of emotion and pain and the withered burn of dead hope.  Drift felt as though his spark could shatter, and still he ran, almost hoping it would, because the weight of this was too much to bear.    
The pavement ended, abruptly, in a snaggled tear of plascrete, and Drift couldn’t stop himself in time, plunging headlong over the edge, feeling the still, stagnant air whistle through him. He had just enough instinct to curl, back first, before he struck the domed roof of a small structure, the glass shattering into frozen tears around him.    
  
He grunted, landing heavily on the ground, shards of glass still flurrying down around him, filling the small space with noise and light and motion.   
  
Motion downward, motion to stillness.   
  
Drift pushed to his knees, blinking his optics clear, feeling the little lines of pain where the falling glass had cut his cables, the masses of dented armor, berating himself.  How could he have been so stupid? How far away were the others--how far had he run in his blind emotion?    
  
He’d let them down. Just as he’d let...Wing--  
  
Wing.   
  
There, on the white stone plinth, his armor repaired, as bright and beautiful as the last time he saw him. It might almost be a dream, Wing might almost have been sleeping.    
  
“Wing.”  The word bubbled up his vocalizer, a knot of pain and joy and longing.  “Wing.”  He stepped closer, and each step made him think, more and more, that there was some filament of destiny here, some reason he was brought here.   
  
The city might be dead, but at least, he thought, resting one hand near Wing’s shoulder, he could say goodbye. And maybe he’d make peace with that part of himself.   
  
He could see no blame on Wing’s still face, just that serene almost-smile he’d taken for granted all those years ago that made it seem that death was a happier place than life.    
  
Drift reached a hand, fingertips brushing the mouthplates and their sweet curve, waiting for words to come.   
  
They didn’t: all the things he’d thought he’d say, all the ease of talking to his sword all these ages, fell away.  This was Wing. This was real. And he was once again callow and wordless.    
  
His hand found itself behind his shoulders, pulling the Great Sword free. It was Wing’s after all; maybe he’d had no right to it.    
  
Drift reached for Wing’s hand, the joints still oiled and smooth, despite what must have been centuries of stillness.  He curled one of the jet’s hand around the hilt, then the other, as though giving it up, giving it over. It wasn’t his: it had never been his.    
  
But he couldn’t pull his hands away, couldn’t make that final break. It wasn’t the sword as much as all he’d let the sword become to him. No more nights curled around it, seeking a mote of solace in the contact, no more scrying hope or guidance from the gem. No more contact, feeling the familiar weight, like an embrace, against his spinal struts.    
  
He wasn’t ready to let go.   
  
He wasn’t sure he ever would be.    
  
“I just...,” the whisper pulled itself from him, so quiet that the thick silence of the small crypt seemed to roar over it, drowning it out, “I owe you everything, Wing.  And.” His mouth worked, struggling with words. “...thank you.”   
  
His hands tightened over Wing’s on the blade’s hilt, his spark giving a painful throb in his chassis.   
  
And then the gem flared to brightness, casting shadows and light like dancing rays, the glyphs along the blade’s hilt beginning to glow, as though pooling up with charge and life.    
  
He couldn’t pull his hands away, suddenly, feeling the charge of the blade pulling at his own spark, a sweet pain he didn’t want to leave.   
  
And then the optic shutters flickered, microns of motion, before sliding back, revealing the growing familiar amber of Wing’s optics, open and warming and alive, as the mouth below it quivered, overwhelmed with emotion, as it struggled to shape one word, torn between tears and joy.   
  
“...Drift.”


	5. Make Me Complete

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And with this my mondegreening of VNV Nation is complete? Rather purple prosey not really that smutty stuff.

There had been too much chaos, when he’d returned  with Wing, the Galactic Forces raining down upon them with all the fire and conviction of the hastily righteous.  And Rodimus wasn’t one to ask too many questions, not when the suddenly-appearing mech beside Drift pulled out his blades and fought alongside, without question, without hesitation.  
  
There was time for questions, too many, back on the Lost Light. And Drift had taken it as a solemn duty to protect Wing from as many as possible, glaring down Ultra Magnus when he’d insisted Wing was some sort of threat, pushing everyone aside , even Ratchet, when Wing had insisted he was fine, simply tired.  
  
Drift dragged him back to his own hab suite, fingers interlaced in Wing’s as though afraid to let go, until the door closed behind them.  
  
Drift was trembling, when he turned, optics searching Wing’s frame, just to reassure himself Wing was really here.  He was.  He was here and he was real and the Great Sword’s gem winked at Drift over the jet’s shoulder, as though a thing back where it belonged, in its right place.  
  
And Wing was in his right place: at least Drift hoped so. It felt right from here, even as starkly new as it was--Wing standing in Drift’s quarters, looking around, curious, taking everything in. It was as if nothing had ever happened between them, as though it had never happened.    
  
“It looks different,” Wing said, finally, with a nod that ended with a smile, as his optics landed back on Drift’s face.    
  
“Different?”  
  
“From how I saw it before.”  The smile widened, as Wing closed the distance between them, running one hand up Drift’s arm.    
  
“Before.” He felt like an echo, stupid and thin.  
  
“Before,” Wing repeated, his other hand brushing over his own shoulder for the Great Sword, with a meaningful look.  
  
“...this whole time?”  He thought back, frantically, over every word, every minute in those long years apart, the confessions he’d spilled to the blade, weaknesses, insecurities, hopes too fragile to survive light and air.  Drift’s body rang with embarrassment, more naked and vulnerable than he’d ever been.  
  
Wing nodded, the light in his optics gentle and sweet.  “This whole time.” Wing leaned in, that soft smile finding Drift’s uncertain mouth, pulling them both into a melting kiss.  
  
It had been...years since Drift had kissed another mech, and that had just felt wrong, start to finish, as though their polarities didn’t quite sync.  This felt right, fated, meant to be, their mouths drawn to each other, bodies drawn to each other across the long tenuous bridge of time. Wing was here, and Wing was kissing him--something he’d hoped for for as long as he’d known hope, and yet hadn’t dared believe could happen.  Drift’s hands caught around Wing’s waist, under the flightpanels, crushing the jet against him, as though convincing himself Wing was real.  He made soft, shapeless syllables into the kiss, words he didn’t know how to say.  
  
“You’ve made a saint of me, Drift,” Wing murmured, protesting.

  
“Don’t care,” Drift said. Sinner or not, Wing was a saint for him, someone to hold his faith and holiness, someone and something to believe in when he couldn’t believe in himself. He stepped backward, drawing Wing with him, back to the berth, optics fixed on the jet, watching the beautiful sway of his steps. It was like the step of the divine, or close enough as someone like Drift was ever going to see.  
  
And he couldn’t imagine anything better, than Wing bending down, somehow managing to fold himself down to the berth beside Drift in an act of consummate grace, never breaking contact with Drift’s gaze, than the way their mouths found each other again, fingers twining in fingers, like images on either side of a mirror breaking the surface, becoming one.  
  
Drift broke the kiss, needing air and space before he became overwhelmed, overcome by Wing’s nearness. He wanted to kiss Wing...forever it seemed, but also see him, touch him, smell him--everything, every sense alive and shimmering with Wing, as though toeing in the aura of something sacred.  
  
Wing followed the kiss, a small sound escaping his vocalizer, a little note of want that seemed to reverberate through Drift’s entire frame.  
  
“Just want to look,” Drift murmured, feeling Wing’s EM field rich and plush against his, so different from the cold of the blade. But he knew he couldn’t just look: his hand moved, almost on their own, to trace the contours of Wing’s body-outlining the complicated silhouette, then moving inward, tracing the shapes of each armor piece, each line and angle, as though writing a geometry of life.    
  
Wing shifted under his touch, giving a soft sigh, his own hands coming up to match Drift’s.  “I wanted to do this for so long,” Wing said, his voice full of a kind of wonder. And it made Drift realize he wasn’t alone, that it wasn’t a one-sided longing, a wild obsession.  It was real and reciprocal and Wing had...Wing had wanted him.  
  
He tried not to think about Wing, in the blade, all these years, as pained as he was by want and longing, starving for touch. All that mattered was now, and the reality of now, and all those hours and nights of empty longing filling, as though cascading back across time. He didn’t need to answer, to echo Wing’s statement--it was evident in every tremble of his fingertips, every fuzzy pulse of his EM field. Wing was wanted, wanted as deeply and profoundly and broadly as Drift could want anything, as though all the loss and lack and insecurity and pain he’d suffered in this world was simply...erased in Wing’s presence, the way the sun outshines any shadow.  
  
Wing twisted onto his side, hands sliding around Drift’s frame, one  leg sliding up the outside of Drift’s thigh, against his scabbard.  Drift could feel the interface hatch, like a little source of heat, against his.  And he wanted Wing, but...not yet.

 Right now, he wasn’t done exploring Wing’s body. He had a feeling he never would be--the jet’s frame a geography of beauty and grace.

  
But they had time now, all the time they could ever want.  And they’d learned, both of them, how precious it was, determined not to waste a moment in regret and sadness.  
  
“Wings,” Drift said, his voice barely stirring the air, naming what he wanted.  Wing complied, stretching out the flight panels Drift had only seen once, faded in memory. They were more beautiful now, he thought, in the soft light of his habitation suite, not the harsh sun of Theophany, glistening like satin, almost inviting touch.  
  
He had no will to resist, skimming his fingertips, then his palms, over the folding plates, the little furrows.  Every one of Wing’s little shivers and twitches only encouraged him, fingertips exploring farther afield, across the spread wing, down into the silky channel between the panels where the Great Sword rested.  
  
Wing arched against him, mouth shaping a bright sound. Drift could only give a low purr in response, almost a growl, possessive and fierce.  
  
Drift pushed up onto one palm, the other still stroking at the extended wing, the bare, unenameled metal of a flight surface, guiding it forward, pulling WIng onto his belly.    
  
Drift slithered over him, chassis sliding over Wing’s back.  His mouth pressed a line of desire, wandering and reverent, over Wing’s helm, the back of the audial flares, his hot ventilation tingling over Wing’s body as he moved downward, knees pressing between Wing’s thighs, hands spreading outward along the flightpanels, symmetrical and worshiping. He’d never seen anything as beautiful as Wing: maybe there had been beauty before him and maybe since, and maybe Wing was just the first time that he saw. It didn’t matter: Wing was the only beauty he needed: even the memory of it, like a pale fire, sustained him over all those lonely  years.  
  
He let his fingertips float off the ends of the wingstruts, bringing them back close to stroke over the surfaces again, without touching, nearly stirring the air above, skimming the EM field. He could feel the shiver of delight travel through Wing’s frame, under his fingers, on the thighs against his knees. He wanted to push forward, but at the same time, he didn’t want to, wanting to draw this out, remember WIng with every bit of his being.  
  
“Drift,” Wing breathed, making the one syllable, as he always did, a vessel of emotion. Drift’s kiss melted into a smile, and he moved back, planting a row of kisses like seeds of something that would blossom later, down the bare channel of Wing’s back, where the Great Sword normally rested.  
  
Wing’s Great Sword, and the place was all the more special for that sense of rightness, of having returned something home. Wing squirmed beneath him, not away from the touch, but almost overcome by it, his grey hands clutching at the berth, a Drift’s mouth flirted with the border between the jet’s back strut and pelvic frame, that area so rarely seen, much less touched.  

  
“Drift!” Wing repeated, this time the need unmistakable, pleading without force.    
  
Drift chuckled, sliding his glossa in a long line up the sword channel, as if relenting, only to press his pelvic armor against Wing’s, sliding over the delicate skirting panels.  “Want something?”  
  
A minute pause, the sense of Wing gathering himself, reaching for composure. “...you.” He tried to turn, lifting his shoulders from the berth, one arm swinging back to pull Drift close, around his shoulder, into a kiss that was losing its edge of gentleness: something demanding and insistent that aroused Drift all the more for its intensity.    
  
“You have me,” Drift said, the words trembling under the weight of truth. Wing always had--he just hadn’t been able to acknowledge it.  
  
Wing pulled more, Drift’s legs sliding over the jet’s sleek hip. “And you have me, Drift,” he said, optics lambent and serious. “We’ve always been meant to be.”    
  
Drift’s mouth chased the words, as though trying to capture them into a kiss along with the half-sob that threatened him, his thighs twining in Wing’s.  His hands sought Wing’s body, exploring and pulling the jet’s body against his. “I want to believe that.”  
  
Wing laughed. “Believe it. Or I’ll believe it for both of us, until your faith is strong enough.”  His own hands skimmed Drift’s body, finding the scalloped wells of his spaulders fascinating and new.    
  
“Done that before,” Drift said, his optics searching Wing’s face for any trace of regret, and finding none.    
  
“I have.” A gentle kiss to his crest, a sinous roll down his body, sending exhilirating tingles through him, as though calling him awake.  “And it’s easy enough to do for what you bring me.”  
  
Drift felt his mouth fall into its old confused scowl. “What I bring you.” He got Wing killed. He ruined Crystal City.  The self-recrimination was written over every inch of his being.  
  
Wing shook his head, stroking his hands over Drift’s frame, as though erasing the blame. “You brought me to life, twice, Drift. I’d thought I was happy in Crystal City. I was merely content.  Until you arrived.”  The light of Theophany, whole and beautiful, seemed to shine from his optics. "You're my conjunx, Drift.  You felt it. I know you did."   
  
Drift didn’t know what to say, words just failed. He’d never thought of that, in all his years of worrying and wondering, all those years of replaying every moment of Crystal City, over and over in his mind, like a favorite song, hearing different notes and nuances each time.  
  
He’d never thought he’d made Wing happy, back then, but looking now, he could see it: the way the jet was so ardent in his defense, so tenderly stern with him. It wasn’t pity, it had never been pity. It was someone valuing something precious and rare to him.  He opened his mouth to speak, to say something and all that came out, the words tumbling over each other, newborn and shy but determined to live, was “...I love you.”  
  
Wing gave a soft cry, hands tightening over Drift’s shoulders, fighting tears. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. Always.” The answer to the question Drift hadn’t asked, the answer to everything that was them: openness, acceptance, total and utter. Wing’s body twined with Drift’s, both of them succumbing under the surging tide of desire that was more than sexual, beyond mere lust and arousal, paling them to pettiness. What was between them was monolithic, eternal, something that had joined them across ages, across time and space, even across the barrier of life and death, and as Drift sank his spike into Wing’s valve, it was a sweet completion, a consummation of the bond between them, unbreakable, a circle closing through the ripples of the past.


End file.
